Aviya Hernstadt

Education Programs Associate
aviya@bax.org

Aviya is a dancer, arts administrator, and Jewish New Yorker. She currently works as the Education Associate at Brooklyn Arts Exchange supporting youth education programming. Since returning to Brooklyn after receiving her BA with double Honors from Pitzer College in 2018, Aviya has worked with Dance to the People, Carmen Caceres DanceAction, Yehuda Hyman’s Mystical Feet Company, and The New Shul, where she co-created a work she performed for the Shul’s 2020 High Holy Day services. This past year, Aviya completed the Dance Education Laboratory’s Foundations course with Jody Arhnold and Catherine Gallant while teaching children in public schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn with Wingspan Arts.

Aviya created her double major at Pitzer in Psychosocial Perspectives on Education and Spanish, and studied and performed with dancers Kevin Williamson, Sakina Ibrahim, John Pennington, Ronit Ziv, and Suchi Branfman, among others. Aviya spent a year living and studying in Quito, Ecuador, where she worked with Ecuadorian contemporary dance trailblazers Klever Viera, Marcela Correa, and Terry Araujo and performed with La Frente de la Danza Independiente.

Aviya organizes with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and The New Shul. She was recently in residence at The Sable Project for summer 2021.